In hindsight of my first visit to Madrid I am forced to acknowledge that I  really didn’t spend much time there. Shockingly little time to have felt so comfortable, and even more shockingly little to return and feel confident in knowing the place. But that’s how it was. In my initial visit of a mere four days I felt at ease in Madrid and upon returning there it felt as if a place I had once livid. When we arrived in the square I was struck with the odd feeling of coming home.

Madrid just has so much to offer and I wanted to show this to David. And so we set off on my tour around the city. I took him to the beautiful Prado, possibly my favorite museum, and showed him all the Goya sketches that that haunted me after seeing them. As we walked about the museum I impressed him with all the knowledge that I had picked up from Sam, Melissa, and my own research, and felt very much like an doyen. (Though admittedly before my first trip to Spain I didn’t know much at all about Goya.) Next I took him to the nearby Museum of Modern Art when they still had their Mucha exhibits and again, in tour-guide like manner, recounted interesting facts and observations about Mucha’s work (once more, facts and observations that were only a few months older for me).

From there we were off to one of my other favorite Spanish museum discoveries, Museo del Jamon. Yes, you translated that correctly, the museum of ham.

No it’s not a real museum, BUT it is a place to get great tortilla patatas, as well as a full picnic lunch for spare change. It’s the cheapest (good) meal in Europe I guarantee that! Though David didn’t seem to agree. First off he just doesn’t like cured ham, which consists of about 80 percent of the Spanish diet and second, he thought the tortilla patatas should be spicy so in broken Spanish he tried to ask for salsa or hot sauce. The man behind the counter thought it appropriate to make fun of David’s attempt. “Quieres bailar salsa?” he asked. And then laughed as he salsa danced around for a bit. David didn’t find this funny, and I think it was at about that point that David decided he liked Barcelona better than Madrid. He came back to the table muttering to himself about burning the place down.

Despite this we did still have a great time in Madrid. Eating the chocolate con churros at Chocolatería San Ginés that I had fallen in love with on my first visit, posing for pictures at the bull fighting stadium where we looked through the windows off, hanging out with Lucas, touring Bethel, and just exploring. We didn’t really have a set agenda after all. We were only in Madrid to see my friends there and to wait for our Euro-Rail passes to arrive in the mail (there had been some mix up with those so we had them express shipped to Madrid). And let me say, Madrid is not a bad place to kill time.

Once our passes did arrive we were off for uncharted territories for us both!